


Real Smile

by williamastankova



Category: Good Mythical Morning, Rhett & Link
Genre: Nothing in-depth but brief description of suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/williamastankova/pseuds/williamastankova
Summary: Always say what you mean, because any day could be your - or their - last.(Or, in which Link loses his best friend, and can't take it.)





	Real Smile

It wasn't meant to end like this. They were meant to live together until they hit a hundred and couldn't do anything for themselves, and yet they could still manage to smile. They were meant to end up in a retirement home, playing games with each other and laughing, both weirding out and making those around them envious. Somehow, they were meant to live forever, and yet somehow, Rhett was gone.

Rhett wasn't okay. There was no denying that. Throughout their entire lives, through the decades spent together, Link could see it. Sometimes, he looked into Rhett's eyes, and he saw such sadness that he didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know how to help him out of the pit he had fallen into all those years ago, so he didn't mention it for the longest time. Only when Jessie called Link and Christy over did he realise he wasn't imagining it: she saw it too. Wordlessly, they told each other everything - all of their experiences with Rhett, everything he had done and said that tipped them off - and they knew something was deadly wrong. Jessie told Christy verbally: since their marriage, she had seen him spiral. Of course, she knew he still loved her, and she loved him dearly, and she didn't fear anything happening to them, but she saw how different he was. Every time she looked at him, she said, she felt his pain. He was in so much emotional pain, and, like Link, she didn't know what to do. She had never had to help somebody in such a dire situation - never been taught how to - and felt completely and utterly useless. They all educated themselves on the proper way to go about dealing with the issue, Christy led them, and they organised a way to get Rhett to open up and recieve the help he needed so much.

Jessie, being his wife, brought it up to him in private. She mentioned the concerns of Link, naturally, and expressed how important it was to everybody that loved him that he spoke to a professional - even if it did just prove them all wrong. With some resisting, Rhett began attending scheduled therapy sessions. At first, he felt silly. He had to speak about the little things in his life: his mother and father, growing up, Buise Creek, /feelings/. However, once his therapist wittled down whatever she was trying to, he began to feel safer. His new safe place was in that miniscule, minimalist office, around the corner from his workplace, and he was okay. He improved, slowly but surely, over a period of a few months, and Link saw the change in him immediately. He called Jessie one night, and she perked up as soon as she answered, "it's working! It's really working," and Link smiled. Link smiled so wide his face hurt, and yet he still continued to smile like a madman the following morning, in the next recording session for GMM. Sincerely, honestly, frankly.

About three months later it happened. It came from absolutely nowhere: one evening, Rhett was eating sushi in a funky restaurant downtown with Link and a few crewmembers, and the next morning he was dead. Apparently, according to the autopsy, he had ingested too much medication, prescribed by his therapist and confirmed by his doctor. Link got the call about an hour after Jessie had found him - thank God it was her; he couldn't even begin to think what would have happened if it were Locke or Shepherd - and he dropped the phone. Racing to the hospital, he found Rhett lying, no heartbeat on his monitor, on a hospital bed. It didn't even look real. The world was a stage, and this was the play. A sick, twisted, vile play.

He couldn't stay in the room. He began to sprint to the bathroom, only to get about ten feet away before vomiting straight onto the previously sterile hospital tiles, and he apologised to the nearest staffmember frantically before looking around to find Jessie. She was sat all alone on a chair outside of the room, apparently unable to stay in their either, and he sat beside her, not daring to speak for any and all reasons, only wrapping an arm loosely around her lithe frame, letting tears silently start rolling down his cheeks. He saw the redness of her face, how puffy it was beneath her unbrushed, raven locks. He couldn't see her face, but he figured it looked something like his did, and decided he didn't want to see that look on her's just yet - or ever, if he got the choice. He knew he wouldn't.

A few days later, he found himself dressed in black, in the car with Christy on the way to the funeral. For days the house had been silent. Even the kids were unusually quiet - he knew what Rhett meant to them, and they knew what Rhett meant to their father. It was out of mutual respect, he concluded. They emerged from the car and stepped into the churchyard, and Link's soul just about left his body. His song choice, 'Real Love', brought something to him, but he remained as stoic as he could.

The service was short - too short - and soon enough - too soon - Link was watching his lifelong best friend's body being lowered into his grave - too early. The casket door was tightly shut. He still didn't believe it was real. He thought he had to wake up soon enough, and he'd turn to Christy in their bed, eyes drenched with tears and shaking, but she'd calm him down, and he'd see Rhett the next morning, and they'd record as usual. They'd talk, and they'd argue, and they'd laugh. He took Christy's hand and squeezed it tightly, just to make sure, but he was still there, and Rhett was still in the ground.

Weeks later, Link had found his voice. His humour was gone still, and he didn't know if it would ever come back, or if it was gone - passed with his friend, Rhett McLaughlin - but he could speak. As soon as this realisation hit him, he invited Jessie and the kids over to eat, attempting to make an event with some semblance of normalcy. She accepted, and he could hear the tiredness in her voice as she spoke, even over the phone. She was exhausted. It was in her eyes when he looked at her when Christy opened the door, feigning a smile, and it was in the new lines in her face when she faked one back. It was in the slithers of grey in her hair, and he even saw it in how she ruffled Locke and Shepherd's hair as they squeezed past her in the hallway. Her petite form was hunched, and Link only ever heard her exhale.

Their dinner was as pleasant as it could have been. Of course, the tension in the air wasn't between them. It was the unspoken words, hanging like corpses, wondering why their table now only seated three. It should have been four - should have been four for a much longer time than this. They should have been able to sit in couples until their hair had completely turned white and had receeded back towards their crowns, and they should have been able to sit with their great grandchildren at the table - all four of them should have. Instead, Link's out of body experience showed him three lonely souls, one completely iced up, and to remain that way for years. He couldn't tell whose that was, though he tried with all his might.

As the night drew to a close, Jessie thanked them for inviting them over and rounded up her sons, smiling at Christy as she cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen sink. The blonde said it was no problem, that they could come any time they wanted, and that it was lovely to see her. Link said formalities, all the way leading up to the front door, and Jessie nodded and smiled her way through them. However, when he opened the door for her and bid her and her family goodnight with a somewhat convincing smile, she let her eyes look more tired than ever, though in a different way Link couldn't place, and whispered a solemn, "I'm sorry." With a gentle squeeze of his arm, she turned and left, and he closed the door behind her.

Though perplexed by her words, he was tired. He had been putting on a front for everybody but himself, and he couldn't be bothered with analysing cryptic messages anymore. After all, the last time he thought he'd managed to fix something, all he'd actually done was shatter it into a million pieces, and make his best friend feel like he had nobody to turn to that wouldn't discuss his issues behind his back. He had isolated Rhett, and he was to blame. His best friend of three-and-a-half decades was dead, and it was all his fault. Stupid, silly, intervening Link, and his words that he passed off as caring. He hated himself, and the only thing that could change that could never happen. He retired to bed.

Brushing his teeth had become a near enough impossible task. Doing something so menial, for what? Once his teeth were pearly, would his friend be alive? No, never. He didn't understand why he did it, and yet he did it all the same. He brushed his teeth, he left the floss for the morning, he ran the water with the plughole blocked, and grabbed the nearest flannel to run over his face quickly. Slipping his glasses off, the world went blurry, and he was thankful. When he couldn't see the world properly, he could almost pretend nothing had happened. In the alternate blurry-universe, Rhett was alive, and Jessie was still bubbly and southern, smiling, and Lily still complained whenever he did a stupid, embarrassing "dad-dance", or tried to chaperone her spring fling, and Lincoln still rolled his eyes but secretly felt prideful when one of his peers found the show, and - God, did he miss the show. In the world he created, the show was going, stronger than ever, and all of their employees were still held in their stable jobs. Last he had heard from real-world Stevie was that she was looking for work managing some unknown store in the market, and he knew that wasn't what she was meant to do - not in a billion years. She was meant to be blurry-world Stevie, who had just proclaimed she was going to propose to her girlfriend, and her life was looking like it never had before. She was meant to live happy, good. They all were. But no.

The water went cold before long, and Link was forced to withdraw the flannel, squeeze it so it didn't drip, and put it back where he found it. As the sink drained, he patted his face dry with the nearest towel, and he reached for his glasses. Fumbling blindly with them, he managed to slip them onto his head, tucking them properly behind his ears, and he accidentally met his own eye in the mirror. Since the news broke, he had avoided all mirrors and reflective surfaces as much as humanely possible, until now. He hadn't wanted to see the Link without Rhett in his life, and now he realised why. In the mirror, he saw a man staring back at him. It looked like him, but it looked straight through him as though he were glass. He despised him.

However, the more he tried to look away, the more he analysed the man's features: his mouth was sunken and his cheeks were hollow, and his hair wasn't standing up how it used to. There was a severe lack of product in it, and he noticed how white it was beginning to turn. His lips were chapped and broken, and he couldn't stop staring. What terrified him most, yet surprised him the least, was his eyes. In them, he saw the sadness. The sadness he didn't know how to deal with. In his eyes, he saw Rhett. In his eyes, he knew he was a goner.


End file.
